NetProspex - Blog

7 Do's and Don'ts for Using Email to Promote Webinars - from BtoB Magazine

Many NetProspex clients use our tool to generate targeted lists of business professionals to fill their opportunity pipeline - and often initiate their relationship via email with useful content like webinars.

Two reasons our clients use NetProspex lists for webinar promotion:

1. Targeted search criteria Offer relevant content for your audience- then find the perfect set of contacts.

2. Verified contact info Ensure your email invitation is being delivered to a live address- then empower sales to follow up with a phone call from our phone-verified records. 

One of the most popular articles in 2010 on BtoB Magazine Online was this collection of tips for using email to promote webinars, by Karen J. Bannan, featuring Janine Popick, CEO and co-founder of online marketing provider VerticalResponse. Have any to add? Leave a comment below.

Happy Webinar-ing!

Click here for original article.

1) Don't forget the basics.

It might sound silly, but marketers often forget the most salient information when sending out a promotional email, such as date, time or program name. Identify the time zone, for example, and include opt-out—and opt-in—links. In addition, make sure there's a link that recipients can click on to preregister for the program.

2) Do keep content simple.

Webinar invitations should include the who, what and why right upfront. Provide a bio for anyone speaking at the event and bullet points that detail exactly what participants should expect to take away from the program. “Really hype the speaker and [his or her] legitimacy,” Popick said. “You want people to walk away from your message with a good idea of why they need to attend.”

3) Don't be shy about reminders.

If someone has signed up for your program, remind them a week before and then again the day before. It won't seem intrusive if you keep it basic, including a link to the program, the time and day reminder, and a quick synopsis of what the recipient should expect. “The message can be changed up a bit, but the bullet points should probably stay the same,” Popick said.

4) Do use email as a follow-up vehicle.

Once someone takes the time to attend a webinar, it's crucial that you reach them in some way immediately following the event. Emails should include a link to the recorded webinar as well as a thank you. Prospects may also receive a special offer. “Segment your attendee list into attendees and registrants. Then segment each into prospects and customers,” Popick suggested. “Leads who didn't attend should get a link and a special offer.”

5) Don't overlook the power of testimonials.

You probably use case studies and customer quotes in traditional email marketing. It can work just as well in webinar promotions. You can include links to previous webinars in your current invitation and call out the benefits of attending one of your events by letting a recent attendee explain what he or she got out of the experience, Popick said.

6) Do cull webinar transcripts and materials for future email content.

During a successful webinar you may receive more questions than you have time to answer. Those questions can be repurposed as e-newsletter content or blog fodder, Popick said. “You can include a sentence in the follow-up email that says, ‘If you didn't get your question answered, check out our blog,' ” she said. You can excerpt one or two so registrants who didn't attend have another reason to click through to the recorded webinar.

7) Don't oversell yourself.

Webinars work best when they are used for thought leadership and education; you don't want your entire program to be too self-promotional. Don't be afraid to tap speakers from outside your company, Popick said. “You want your speaker to be viewed as a best practice guru within your industry,” she said.

Click here for original article.

Email Marketing: 7 Tips to Make Email Drive Revenue

NetProspex's Chief Revenue Officer Michael Bird presented 7 tips for optimizing your email marketing all in the name of driving revenue for your organization.

"Everybody in your company is in sales." - Michael C. Bird, NetProspex

1. Create a sense of urgency

2. Time your emails strategically. Highest open rates based on when emails are delivered are at 7:00am

3. Don't make them think. Less is more - drive all links to one destination for a 48% higher conversion rate.

4. Design for mobile. Smart phones will outnumber PCs in 2012. Keep your message short and sweet, and keep HTML simple.

5. It's all about relevance. Recipients will still mark an email as SPAM, even if they've opted-in to recieve it, if the content is irrelevant.

6. Walk a mile in their inboxes. Would you open, read, and respond to your own emails?

7. Define your own best practices. What works for most companies might not work for you. Always measure, fix, rinse and repeat.

 

Two things to remember:

1. Email marketing must drive revenue

2. Everybody in your company is in sales

http://bit.ly/emailmarketingguide - free webinars, PDF downloads, and resources.

 

 Michael C. Bird prepares for the Internet Summit crowd.

5 examples of users changing business models in the publishing world - Notes from SIIA

The publishing industry is coming alive... thanks to users. 

That's my take away from last week's digital information industry’s flagship conference, the SIIA Information Industry Summit. No matter the media, whether it be music, books, newspapers or business media, the themes are the same. Users are getting in on the act and content is alive because of that. Form is changing in every publishing model and publishers recognize that new forms provide vastly increased product and business opportunity.

In thinking about the various publishing media over the past few days after the conference, I couldn't help notice examples of how users are impacting each of the publishing media among the people I know. Here's a few tales from my neighborhood (literally) that illustrate what's going on and how pervasive this already is across publishing:

1. The music industry leads the way, not as an industry but at the user level.

Take a look at our friend and neighbor's son Samuel (The Wiz) Adams music video "I hate college" on YouTube with nearly one million views and was posted as a response to Asher Roth's hit "I love College". Sampling and mash-ups are redefining the form of music and the result is that instead of simply listening to each others music, artists are resonating with each other and Joe Public is not only getting in on the act, but is redefining the industry.

The result is that music performers are beginning to sing together in almost a real-time conversation. Sam is currently negotiating a record contract with one of the majors, which looks like a win-win for the music industry and these new stakeholders in the equation...the public.

2. Japanese cartoons, or anime, provides a great example of this reverb effect.

Another local in my neighborhood, Ian Condry, Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at MIT works as a cultural anthropologist and studies online sharing (or piracy) in the circulation of anime, which turns out to be vital to the industry and to the transnational flow of Japanese culture to and from America and Europe, even if the industry seldom recognizes its value. More simply put, kids around the world love Yu-gi-oh, Pokemon, and its more upper-teen versions such as Mushi-shi, a bizarre, otherworldly suspense series. The anime industry is a master of the formless and the form, and is a publisher's dream. Anime pops-up everywhere, from cartoons to trading cards to video gaming and movies.

Anime relies on a connected network of users/creators that keep the industry alive. Ian Condry tells of a strange world of "in-between" animators, talented kids who live, sleep and eat as an integral part of anime production. But maybe most important are the unpaid non-Japanese fans or "fansubs", who add translated subtitles and then distribute the latest, hard-to-get anime. Anime is the most evolved example of how electronic media resonates through a conversation with its fan base and creators regardless of national boundaries.

3. Newspapers are also getting in on the act.

Newspapers have figured out that virtual real estate on their website isn't as confined as the restriction of print space. On the internet, newspapers find the additional space on websites can be put to good effect by letting the smartest minds out there compete for guest columns. Take a look at Anthony Goodman's column on the FT.  Anthony describes the arrangement as a clear win-win. The newspaper get high quality, free content. The writer gets the platform and the voice that is leveraged across their business and career.

4. Book publishers have to close their eyes and jump into the ebook.

The possibilities are endless and therefore difficult to predict. But these examples are all fundamental shifts in how media works and really exciting. There was a lot of talk and uncertainty at SIIA around the book publishing industry, which is next up to dive into this digital transition with the arrival of ebook readers like Kindle and now the Apple iPad. The opportunity is immense, but the change in form is as yet unclear.

The "book" is a ghost in the machine that both publishers and users have yet to come to grips with. What does that mean exactly? Well a book is a form based on old-world paper and printing technologies. There is no reason why the book in its current form of 200 to 400 pages needs to exist in the digital world.  At its core the book is a story, and stories can be any size or length. How users will contribute to this space and use this freedom is still hazy, but the models above provide the signposts and the prognosis is that book publishing like other media will come alive as a result.

5. The staid world of business media is also changing.

Our own company NetProspex is a social business media tool for sales people, so we are in the thick of these transitions and NetProspex was proud to be one of several new business models previewed at the SIIA conference. NetProspex allows business-to-business sales people pool their business contacts and the sum of the parts is a directory of business executives and their contact information that has a fantastic impact on business efficiency.

People are in business to do business and they need to know what tools and services can provide more revenue for their companies or reduce costs. By pooling resources, sales people can get their message out to more potential customers who buy products on behalf of their companies. For NetProspex the challenge is that about 25% of people change jobs each year, and any directory of business executives soon gets out of date. NetProspex solves that part of the equation by cleaning and scrubbing the data to make sure its accurate up-to-date.

Our business is embracing these changes because in the digital age it is clear to us that information is a living thing and user contribution is key to that life.

An international thought from London.

I'm in London this week at Online Information 2009 which showcases European business media.

My first lesson in speaking the language taught me one very surprising fact.

European business contact databases don't exist.

Nada, nichts, de rien.

Now, there are some differences in the legal issues between some European countries. For instance, the UK and a handful of other countries amended business email communication to an opt-out policy in 2003. 

But in some European countries even an unsolicited phone call is verboten.

As business communication and conversations expand into social media expand, will I be able to respond to a French tweet if I see one?  Or will I have to have an existing business relationship with the person before I can reply?

Thanks to the internet, business knows few international boundaries. Me and my team at NetProspex believe that in business, it's good practice to be found and this international concept that will overcome all barriers.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, s'il vous plaît.

A new direction for B2B communication- Dreamforce 2009

After a week in San Francisco at Dreamforce 2009, I've been reflecting on the event and its crowd of 16,000 sales and marketing executives. The number of attendees demonstrates that Salesforce, and it's ecosystem of hundreds of AppExchange partners, is very much on fire in an otherwise lukewarm economy.

There were many conversations happening both on the floor and online, and much business conducted in the exhibit hall between buyers and AppExchange vendors. There was also a lot of excitement generated by Marc Benniof's announcement that outlined the inclusion of social media into the Salesforce platform.

Smart move. One that should be followed by B2B software companies. As the electronic conversation on the web grows from email to include social media channels in the business community, sales automation platforms will need to include these new channels.

Something I found interesting was the poor representation of the big business information publishers like Thomson/Reuters, Reed Business Information and McGraw Hill.  It seems that large publishers are looking askance at the opportunity in the AppExchange partner ecosystem. I have spoken to a number of these players and the issue seems to boil down to the fact that they can't see the sort of immediate revenue numbers that would justify changing already frantic development priorities which are being squeezed by the need to cut costs in the economic downturn.

However, the key factor here is that sales and marketing automation delivers amazing returns, and will drive continued expansion and innovation of the Salesforce ecosystem which cannot be ignored by the big business content players forever. In the meantime, lots of new companies are springing up to fill the gap with new content models.

At NetProspex, we believe that business information will respond to all new communication channels as the sales and marketing discussion spreads into social media.

If you'd like to take this discussion onto a social media channel, we're always available on twitter @netprospex.

An Ecosystem of Innovation

Salesforce.com has Oracle, SAP and Siebel surrounded - with the help of some friends.

The wife of our COO, Mark Feldman, was experiencing contractions last week. She calmly asked him if there was an iPhone App to help with timing the contractions. Mark searched the App store and discovered multiple applications, all able to help with timing, recording, and sharing pre-labor contraction information.

It’s clear that the open-system iPhone has enabled developers and partners to solve many needs in our complex lives-and it is astounding. Think of the volume of innovation that an open platform provider like Apple creates with the iPhone. We’ve all heard ‘there’s an app for that’- and it’s true! But this concept is not limited to the B2C world.

A platform where we’ve noticed a flourish of innovation is in sales and marketing automation. (We're talking doubling the productivity of sales and marketing teams here). There are hundreds of companies using Salesforce.com’s platform to develop applications designed to assist sales and marketing processes. When used together, these applications hook together to create an amazing ecosystem of innovation.
 
It’s this ecosystem of innovation within a cloud-computing environment that has given Salesforce an edge over Oracle, Siebel, SAP, and Dynamics.   

Salesforce.com is still vastly under-penetrated in large corporations where the big guys hold sway with bundled, corporate-wide financial database systems. These big guys are starting to ape Salesforce by offering API access, but they're not serious quite yet. A bloom of innovation in sales and marketing is happening, and it's happening without the major players in the market... Salesforce and friends have the big guys surrounded.

NetProspex will be releasing our own Salesforce application this year at Dreamforce (come say hello in booth #12!) Our tool is cloud-based, bringing verified contact information to the desktops of sales and marketing teams.

Have you done better business thanks to external apps within Salesforce.com?

Do you agree that the idea of an ever-changing ecosystem of partners can eventually overtake an inert, static system?

Leave a comment below. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Gary Halliwell
CEO
NetProspex

The way of the Dodo... Don't let your email marketing go extinct.

 A post from NetProspex CEO, Gary Halliwell.

Loren McDonald of emailInsider recently wrote of the coming of age of B2B email.  

“B2B marketers are catching up to their B2C colleagues and, in many cases, surpassing them with the breadth and depth of their email marketing programs. They're finding ways to deliver greater utility and value without risking channel burnout,”

I concur.  It has to evolve, otherwise it won’t survive. 

The recession has moved many large companies to add “opt-out” email campaigns to their marketing mix. Outbound marketing is still is a cost-effective lever that can be pulled when buyers become a little shy.  It’s cheap, it’s effective and by golly, recipients find it useful if it’s done right.  

Conversely, I think “opt-in” email, from rented publisher lists or internal customer lists is showing signs of going the way of the dodo, for the simple fact that none of us can remember what websites we have registered at over the years, and if a message is targeted and relevant and helps me improve my business, I’d be remiss in not taking notice.

A large element of B2B email marketing has gone “educational”…that is, it provides useful information in the form of webinars, recent research, videos or tips and tricks to improve efficiencies.  What we’re seeing less of is the corporate newsletter that is about as readable and as welcome as used bathroom tissue.  Special offers used to be a big thing also…and we’ve all tuned them out already, if spam filters haven’t gotten to them first.  It used to be said in B2B marketing that this type of drip email was great for brand-building.  I doubt it.  There’s nothing worth my attention in a newsletter or special offer I never open.  What does work is short, concise, business oriented email that lets me know of a useful resource or knowledge.

At a fundamental level, I think we can safely assume electronic communication between business people is not going away anytime soon, but that email will simply be subject to the laws of natural selection.  The stuff people find useful will continue to morph and become even more valuable.  The rest will die off.

Being able to sign up for high-quality, free, educational or insightful information on how to use the myriad of tools out there is a fantastic resource.  The business world changes all the time, and there’s always lots of great ideas and products that can help our businesses become more efficient.  Bad (read: useless) email will end up marked as SPAM or not read by users, and SPAM software will take over the rest, even if it is from a vendor you have a relationship with.  The useful stuff will stay in circulation.

Email will move towards the light. It has to, or it won’t last as a marketing medium.  It’s clear that the marketing messages that are targeted, relevant, and useful, are those that will survive.

- - - - - - -

Gary is the co-founder and CEO of NetProspex, Inc.

garyh@netprospex.com

He spent 14 years building online publishing companies, and began his career as a diamond prospector, working in remote areas of the African bush, before finding his current niche in online publishing. See more at the NetProspex website.

Sound Sells - Say it Quietly

CEO’s across the county are thumping their desks demanding sales people talk with more customers. So lots of companies are going outbound, no longer waiting for customers to come to them.  We want those conversations to be good conversations obviously.  But is sound a barrier to your sales?  I mean the sound quality of all those phone conversations.  It’s easy to overlook, easy to fix and I think it can have as big an impact as lots of other things you’re trying as you fight this recession.

Driving home recently, as the car warmed up and my attention shifted from freezing to death to a conversation on the radio something got my attention: how intimate a good conversation is.  Two people separated by a continent, across the ether, talking like they were sitting next to each other.  Two people in two sound-proofed studios, with headphones and mikes and audio so clear they could almost sense each other.

It made me aware of the phone calls I’ve made since I bought a stereo phone headset (yes that’s right two headphones and a mike).  The sound has been great.  And so have the conversations.  I can hear every word, every nuance in the conversation, every hesitation - and that added information really helps me communicate more effectively.  My conversations have even been intimate, though not in a way my partner needs to worry about.

There are three problems in any sales pit with regards to sound.

The more noisy it is, the more sales people lack intimacy with the customer.  Have you ever noticed that the best telesales people are often the most intimate.  They speak quietly and really listen.  They’re not selling with cute techniques.  If you’re solution selling, you’ve got to listen and listen well.

In noisy sales pits, the buzz can be intense but often the sales people can’t really hear themselves.  Ever had a sales person who knows the product, works real hard, but doesn’t quite perform like he or she should?  Chances are, he isn’t listening to himself enough, even though he may be listening as hard as he can to the client.  If he’s talking loudly into the phone  because his neighbors conversations are distracting, he probably needs ear protection.  Have you tried having a conversation next to a jackhammer or several jackhammers?

This is one is really important. How do you feel as a customer when you deal with a call center and hear all those other sales people in the background?  How special do you feel?  With the sound of the sales pit in the background, the customer is never relieved from the reality that he or she is being sold to.  Is that how we want our sales conversations to sound?

Bi-aural headsets are often difficult to find in the retail stores, but Logitech and Plantronics both have great products and they’re priced similarly to the single ear sets.   The cushioning and noise canceling is great.

Improving the sound of sales can be a really small expense and easy to rectify.  The net effect is sales people improve their listening, stop shouting and the quality of the conversation improves noticeably with every sales person who I’ve had try this.  In addition overall noise level in the sales pit drops so the customer stops being reminded it’s a sales call. It’s a big impact…of the sort of magnitude we should be looking for in these tough times.

Over Viagra Calls

I'm a busy guy but I still don’t mind sales people who I don’t know contacting me by email or phone if they are have targeted me accurately, understand what our company does, what my role is and therefore have made an intelligent guess whether their product is relevant to my needs.  That is...they have already made some attempt to qualify me before making contact.

I'm talking about a business solicitation here, not being blasted about Viagra or some form of enlargement process.  No comment on my needs in these areas, suffice to say that those sorts of solicitations are annoying and potentially dangerous if fraudulent.

But with regular business solications, poorly targeted email or calls can still be annoying and time-wasting.  There’s lots of room for improvement in this area and that’s what our business NetProspex is ultimately all about.  We use technology to build in-depth accurate business directories, so that sales communciations can be more targeted and both sales people and business decision makers waste less time dealing with unqualified approaches.